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Friday, April 22, 2016

Blogging Around

Kobe Bryant is Catholic?

Yet during one of the darkest moments of his life, Kobe Bryant turned to his Catholic faith. In an interview with GQ last year he explained:

“The one thing that really helped me during that process — I’m Catholic, I grew up Catholic, my kids are Catholic — was talking to a priest. It was actually kind of funny: He looks at me and says, ‘Did you do it?’ And I say, ‘Of course not.’ Then he asks, ‘Do you have a good lawyer?’ And I’m like, ‘Uh, yeah, he’s phenomenal.’ So then he just said, ‘Let it go. Move on. God’s not going to give you anything you can’t handle, and it’s in his hands now. This is something you can’t control. So let it go.’ And that was the turning point.”

The Mercy of Shutting Up.

This is one I struggle with, sometimes more successfully than others. Joanne McPortland finds something unexpected in Pope Francis’s recent apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love). I especially liked her specific ideas for applying "hold your peace." The one I mention below seems specifically applicable to Americans (we like to help!) and is one where I am specifically working on improving my own behavior.

Here, then, are just of few of the many situations in which I need to practice mercy by holding my tongue — and atoning for the times I have not.

When I’m just trying to helpful, damn it! This is a trap a lot of us fall into, rushing to meet others’ silence or sadness or need with a flood of unsolicited advice. In almost every such situation, the merciful and truly helpful response is receptive silence, listening presence. Too often, I react instead with links to medical websites, amateur psychoanalysis or (worst of all) anecdotes about how my experience was so much worse.

Work When You Work, Play When You Play

The key to a happier life with more time in it. The problem is that we seem to have forgotten how to do that. Never fear! The Art of Manliness is here ... with ways to combat today's distractions.

Restlessness is one of the acute maladies of our time, and there are many causes of it, from the gap between how fast information moves and the stubborn slowness of “real life”; our increasing distance from nature and lack of physicality; the avalanche of options we have to choose from in all areas of life; and the amount of “shadow work” corporations have outsourced to us consumers.

There’s another obvious factor in our restlessness as well, and that’s the sheer number of distractions that constantly pull at our attention, erode our focus, and keep us from concentrating on the task at hand.

Happily, while the other sources of our restlessness often require comprehensive changes to our culture and our personal lifestyle, this last factor can be attended to with the adoption of a simple principle: work when you work; play when you play.

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THE GOOD PLACE

Janet: Actually, it might help me if I could hear Jason's side as well.

Tahani: Oh, no, no, no. That'll only slow things down. Look, I'll tell you his side. He thinks that I have to control everything and that he has no voice in this relationship. Right, Jason? Good. Now, where were we? ... Oh, I just heard that.

HOROSCOPE

You'll receive a two-hour lecture from renowned economist Milton Friedman merely for claiming that a penny saved is a penny earned.

Note this is satire via The Onion (warning: site can contain explicit content). Satire means: trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

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